Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:02 I grew up going to artists workshops and galleries with my mom. There was an emphasis on craft and folk, or is art in my life. One workshop we frequented every time went to Jerusalem, which was so far yet so close to the village I spent. Most of my childhood in was the Bali and families ceramic studio on Noblis road. We collected pieces over the years. And when I began to go to Jerusalem and Jordan, where another Armenian owned ceramics workshop exists, I would collect pieces for my mother. I went with a knowledge of the historic gold tragedies that brought the Armenians out of Anatolia and to Palestine and Jordan, but not the specifics of the person who brought the ceramics that I grew up around. It was only recently that I learned they came from <inaudible> in Anatolia to my corner of the world. And they learned this from someone who is dedicated to documenting their peoples, their family's history, someone who doesn't draw inside the lines come to knowledge and its producers a limited series from the Maidan produced by me and Amy <inaudible>.
Speaker 0 00:01:08 In each episode, we'll be talking to people who are at the forefront of knowledge production, typically away from traditional educational power structures. We will be talking to people who curate, who edit, who unresearched research centers, who write and more. I held does a Sonic studies, and we'll be talking to people who fit into the study of Islam and the Muslim majority world, sometimes most of the times, but that doesn't mean there'll be Muslims, selves or Arab or Turkish. It just means that we don't have perfect terms for describing this big intersecting world. Not yet. The goal is to get a wide variety of people talking about different ways of accessing history ideas and more to uplift the people we're interviewing and inspire you.
Speaker 0 00:01:54 Our first guest is <inaudible>. She's one of those people who can do drastically different things. Well, she she's, to my mind, everything a professional historian should be she's sensitive. She's kind, she's fearless, she's detail oriented. She's also a professional flutist and is the director of perspectives ensemble, which is a chamber group she's invested in documenting her people's history, be it musical material and more we'll be talking about amongst other topics. Her recent book out 2019 from Stanford university press is in print Redwood press. It's about our grandfather, the artist entrepreneur, the ceramicist <inaudible> it's called feast of ashes, the life and art of <inaudible>. It was nominated for a pen Jacqueline Belgrade weld award for biography, and was a finalist for the pros, awarding biography and autobiography. Debbie <inaudible> in 1919 founded the art of Armenian pottery in Jerusalem where his work and that of his followers is now celebrated as a local treasure, honest Young's life encompass some of the most tumultuous upheavals of the modern middle east born in an isolated Anatolian mountain village. He witnessed the rise of violent nationalism in the waning years of the autumn and empire endured arrest and deportation in the Armenian genocide founded a new ceramic tradition in Jerusalem under the British mandate and spent his final years uprooted and Cairo beta its book begins and ends with his granddaughter Sato and her experiences as an artist and as a historian of this important narrative while Eliane is now working on a second book. So let's get to know her.
Speaker 1 00:03:39 So, um, I guess to start, we can ask, what are you, are you most excited about right now?
Speaker 2 00:03:45 Well, I'm hugely excited about something that I set in motion last year and then forgot about through the early part of the pandemic, but now it's about to arrive and that is my brand new custom made Brandon flute produced in Boston, um, which is going to come literally any day. Now I'm a flutist as you know, by profession. And for a long time, I had been thinking about making a change to a modern instrument and after lots of mulling and consulting with colleagues, I decided to make the plunge and order a flute from Brandon. And so I gave him all my specifications and a big deposit, and then I forgot about it because the whole world turned upside down, but now it's going to arrive and I have to prepare my home and prepare my thinking and my schedule and my life to accept this new tool to make music. And I'm super excited about it.
Speaker 1 00:04:48 Okay. So I'm not a musician, so you're going to have to bear with me. How do you, is it like a, oh, this is a really crude metaphor. Is it like a pair of shoes that you have to like break in?
Speaker 2 00:05:00 Well, you do have to break it in a little bit. I mean, the flute is metal in this case, it's silver and gold and it has paths that are the underneath the keys that you press depressed to produce the different notes. And those pads take a certain amount of breaking in. But the biggest thing is that each instrument is idiosyncratic. And so I have to learn like where the pitches are exactly of each of the notes. What angle, you know, do I blow the air into the head joint or over the head joint? Like how do I produce sound in the lower register or the very, very high register. So these are all sort of the intimate nuances of an instrument and it just simply takes time to get to know them because each flute is vastly different from each other flute. And especially when you're going, as I am from playing on an instrument that was made in 1948 to an instrument made in 20 with lots of technological advancements, there's going to be a period of adjustment. Okay. I have so many questions
Speaker 1 00:06:06 Just because like, I don't all my musician friends, I, I guess I never talked to them about these things specifically, but then again, I, I don't talk to foodist I talk to you often, but I don't talk to you as a flutist.
Speaker 2 00:06:21 Often we know each other in a different capacity.
Speaker 1 00:06:24 Okay. So I have more questions, which is, um, is it common for people to play on? Is this the right word, vintage instruments?
Speaker 2 00:06:33 Yes. And it's, it really varies from city to city, but, um, in New York city for the last couple of decades, uh, there's been a big preference for vintage flutes made by the Vern Powell company, which is also in Boston. Boston is sort of the geographic center of American flute makers. Um, so there was a big preference for, for these older, uh, flutes. I mean, the, the metals that they use, the silver alloys that they used were different. The scale is different. The way, uh, sound resonates in the instrument is different. And a lot of us felt like we could get a very beautiful sound from these old instruments, but they're extremely temperamental. And before the pandemic, I used to travel a lot. And so I loved my instrument very much, but it would be hard to be in another country and then find that all of a sudden I had a leak or some other kind of a problem with the instrument. And I wouldn't know any repair people in the vicinity. And it was very problematic. So after a long period of both loving my instrument and struggling with my instrument, I just decided that I wanted something that was much more reliable and that I would find the time somehow to make the adjustments so that I can make the sound of it, my own, my own personal sound. Um, but now of course I have all the time in the world.
Speaker 1 00:08:04 Are we going to get, are you going to perform for your friends and let us in on the process of you trans, is it really a transition? Are you going to retire? No,
Speaker 2 00:08:16 No, no, no, no, no. You mean, am I going to retire my old instrument? Or am I going to retire myself? No. Oh, your old instrument
Speaker 1 00:08:24 Don't please don't retire. No, of course
Speaker 2 00:08:28 Not. Of course. Um, I probably won't because I love that instrument so much, but it is, it has been difficult, you know, when I, when I've been touring with it, I mean, because it's very, uh, there's very little room for, uh, changes, variances, uh, leaks, as I was mentioning, um, underneath the keys that you see fluid depressed to produce the sounds, there's a layer of padding. And then there's a layer of a thin, uh, membrane, which used to be made out of fish skin. Now it's an artificial kind of fish skin. And what happens is when you play for hours and hours, they felt that's inside will bloat and the, the key won't settle properly. So there'll be a leak and there'll be a difficulty in either producing sound or the pitch will change, or, you know, some other annoying issue, uh, with the new instruments, they have a different system, they use different materials.
Speaker 2 00:09:26 Um, the old materials were part of what contributed to the very beautiful sound. But now we, we have to figure out how to adapt. And from all reports, these, the brand and instruments are, are extremely reliable. Uh, of course, you know, you get into an airplane, the air is very dry. You, you go to a different altitude and have to adjust. And of course it's a flutist. That's really an issue. You know, like if I go to, um, New Mexico or something, or if I go to south America to one of the really high cities, it's a completely different sensation, the altitude. And sometimes we don't even have time to adjust. So if the flute takes on, if the flute is generous, um, it's, it's a big asset for a flutist.
Speaker 1 00:10:15 It's interesting to have a relationship with an object that is subject to these environmental changes. It's like, it's very different to how I think in some ways I always think about like how I, as a historian, I'm changing things by writing about them, but I'm not changing them physically kind of, I mean, I don't aim to change them physically. I don't aim to destroy manuscripts, but it's, so it's just interesting to, to hear this, the closest relationships that I have, like that is with like my pens.
Speaker 2 00:10:52 Yeah. Oh, I know. I know that feeling I've gotten like very, very fond of this, um, universal the roller pen. I don't know if you know those. I think they're made in Japan. I have to order them on eBay. Cause like they're the only thing I really enjoy handwriting with and I have terrible handwriting, but I do like to take my notes by hand when I'm, you know, reading a book or something like that. I prefer, I, I find it embeds things in my memory better if I'm writing by hand. And this is my favorite pen. How about you?
Speaker 1 00:11:24 Uh, that's a very long conversation because I'm a felon and geek I'm looking at tomorrow. I brought two with me right now to like take notes on and I, I, um, right before this interview, I was looking at like new inks to try. Um, and it's part of this. I think I just it's. It's how much I love the material culture around books, but, um, yeah, that's what I, I that's. So I'm using this beautiful ink from, oh, actually it's an American meeting. Great. Now that sheens red, when you write it's blue, but it sheens red when you turn it up to the light. And if you write on the right paper, because she paid, see, this is like, whenever I talked to him about my family, my friends about this, they always sort of go off glassy-eyed and are boring. And why would you ever think about the quality of the paper you write on, but it's also kind of part of my work and it's something I think about a lot.
Speaker 1 00:12:17 And I find it really nice to have this, this reminder of like how important like the physicality of things are. Um, so yeah. Um, but to transition back to you, um, one thing I admire about your musical career is that it's like, it's so multi it, there seems to be, I mean, we're talking about the food, but at the same time, they're all these different aspects to it, right? You have this, um, you perform, but you also, you know, record music, you organize around music and create events to educate people and I find your career to just be so Multilink
Speaker 2 00:12:58 Well, that's, that's really kind of you, I would say that they're really like two threads to my career. Like one is to play the flute and to play with other musicians. And the other is to sort of reunite music with the environments in which it's been created because I mean, that, that's the great, um, vacuum. I mean, I felt as, as I was, uh, learning how to play and learning about music was that music was so often separated from the circumstances in which it was written or the influences that were operating on the composers as they were writing pieces. And so I've always had this, this kind of urge to, you know, reunite those things, whether, whether it was with my own group, you know, with doing research and, and including aspects of that research in the rehearsal process, or just in general, trying to understand how art relates to its environment. And I think it was that kind of lifelong, um, strong desire. Or I could even say compulsion that led me to my interest in understanding, you know, who my grandfather was and where he, where he came from. Okay. Before
Speaker 1 00:14:11 We go on, just because I know that we're speaking to a very diverse audience, how do you pronounce your name and how do we pronounce your grandfather's name, uh, who your book is about? Of course. And I mean, how do you, what's your relationship with your name and with his
Speaker 2 00:14:26 Name? So I pronounced my name in the United States. I say Sato moot, galleon. Uh, it's really Sato <inaudible>, there's a sound in Armenian that doesn't exist in English. So to simplify it for American English speakers, my family always just said Medallian. And my grandfather's name is <inaudible>, um, spelled David English, but Tevye does the Armenian form of David. He, he introduced David when he arrived in, uh, you know, British run Palestine, uh, when he Anglicised the spelling of it.
Speaker 1 00:15:07 Something I think a lot about is how we bend for other people. And I don't necessarily think it's something we do because of the times we'd just be, we change our names are pronounced and we, it takes some measure of stress off of us, but it, I mean, there are all these different layers to like naming and how we go by our names.
Speaker 2 00:15:27 Yes, yes. My name is exactly my grandmother's name. I mean, her name was <inaudible>. Uh, so Sato is the diminutive of <inaudible>. Uh, so my name is actually Sato and it is true. Uh, and we see this so frequently, especially, I think we're our attention to this issue is heightened at the moment. But, you know, I'm thinking about my grandfather who was not only an artist, but I mean, he, he worked in a commercial sphere, so he had to make himself accessible to a wide variety of people whose native languages were all different. And, um, I don't think it changed in any sense, his view of himself. Uh, I think he was just trying to make himself accessible to others, which she was very good at doing.
Speaker 1 00:16:18 And I think there's something really pointed about the fact that you, his name is David on the front of the book and then throughout the book he's debates. And I think that's, it's very, I enjoy reading the book so much because we begin and end with you. And what that does, is it colors the middle of the book, um, with its, I mean, the middle of the book is this very, very, um, careful history of your grandfather and I mean the Armenian genocide, but also, um, of course you don't refer to it as the genocide throughout the book, and we'll get to that in a little bit, um, for different reasons, but also, um, of ceramics and by calling him Tubby, I think we're reminded constantly that he's, I'm reminded at least that he's your grandfather. I think that does a lot of work for you, um, in terms of sort of narrative.
Speaker 2 00:17:16 Well, I mean, he's recorded in art history books as David ons yen. So it was a very conscious choice to title the book, using the name that's internationally recognized for him and the name that, you know, he had on his business card since Jerusalem. Uh, but since the nine internal biographical chapters of the book, uh, rely very heavily on, um, family narratives that were preserved by my mother and, and are very much also a work of memory, as well as a work of history. It only made sense to call him by the name that he was known, uh, within his family.
Speaker 1 00:17:55 Let's talk about the family aspect of it. How does it, how is it to write a project like this as a member of that, of your family and realize, I mean, what, what does one have to balance when, when does that, what did you balance when you did that?
Speaker 2 00:18:10 Well, I mean, I relied a lot on, um, the records that have been kept in my family and my mother's work before she died in 1995, transcribing all the oral narratives that have been passed down to her. And, you know, we're the product of like many, many generations of memory within my maternal line. Um, you know, of course it's a complicated thing and I wanted to, I mean, I wanted to make a contribution to the historical memory of my grandfather. So it was definitely a hybrid of taking these family histories, family narratives, but then doing a tremendous amount of reading over a period of a year to sort of be able to situate them in their historical context. And then of course the last phase was the archival research and it turned out that there was a great deal of archival material that had never really been examined. So, um, yeah, I mean the book took like 10 years, the last five years were really concentrated work, kind of threading together, all these disparate aspects of, um, understanding who he was, but that was sort of a conclusory because before I even began thinking about writing a book, I was kind of contending with, uh, my lack of understanding of the trauma that had been passed down in my family and my own kind of personal work to make sense of that
Speaker 1 00:19:43 Was the book therapeutic for you.
Speaker 2 00:19:46 I think the book was a culmination of a long period of, um, of, of literally therapy of reading psychoanalytic theory of reading about intergenerational transmission of trauma of, um, you know, doing the work that was necessary to, um, sort of construct an internal model of the world that was more functional than what I had before. And after about a seven year period of, of that kind of work, I embarked on reading history so that I understood, um, the circumstances that my family had survived and the mass violence that they had survived and the sort of geopolitical violence and displacement. So, uh, yeah, it's been a kind of very, very long trajectory, but, um, it's been extremely satisfying because I, I feel like I was able to fill in some historical, I mean, some gaps that have been left by art historians, but also come to some understanding of what my family had survived and to arrive at, at a feeling of pride for my grandfather's persistence, my family's persistence and their survival.
Speaker 1 00:21:04 One of the things I enjoy the most about the book is that it's, it's, it's a heavy book. I, I was surprised that I was able to read it as quickly because I think the first day I read it, it was so difficult to read. And of course when you, it, I mean, you begin with the personal chapter and then you get into the more historical chapters and those 13 or so pages I'm checking right now. Yeah. 13 pages at the beginning are so heavy. And then you get into this, this idyllic Anatolian childhood that w tad and your, you know, you begin with him sort of running or running through the Hills. And, and it's such a, there's some cognitive dissonance there, but also there's this understanding of what is what's lost and these like layers of it. And, and of course the, and I won't spell the end of the book.
Speaker 1 00:22:02 Um, there is, there is. So there is a narrative that you go through. And I think I definitely, I mean, I was unlike many histories that I read where I know the ending of the story. I felt very on my toes reading this because I had a vague sense knowing the history, what would happen and reading the blurb, but you're brought along. I mean, your family members are so beautifully fleshed out. They're there they're characters they have, and they're not historical figures like they are in, in most books. And I think what this does so well is you get a sense of the historical debates. Those are embedded into the history itself, the way you tell it is so delicate, but then you get these very human figures who, you know, you know, can annoy you at times can impress you tremendously. Um, and, and, and each have different reactions to the events they go through. So it's such it just the whole time I'm trying to get to this because I just, I feel so overwhelmed when I think about this book. I don't, I think, I don't know if this was planned, but I think one of the implicit arguments that you're making is that all history is personal and that X has to drive it, right? Yes,
Speaker 2 00:23:26 Yes, absolutely. I mean, you know, that was kind of a revelation to me at some point in my life was that, you know, history is not a thing history or histories are narratives that are constructed by the people who are writing them, you know? So, um, there are so many different ways of at it. And of course, you know, I'm not a trained historian, but I I'm a careful person. And, uh, I'm, uh, a person who, you know, wants to make sure that any, anything I suggest or assert can be proven. Um, and so it was important to me to kind of complexify my family's story, you know, that, that it wasn't just like this happened, this happened. And then that happened, you know, but I, I wanted to sort of show or restore the humanity and the agency of all these characters, which is something that's like very often lost on the personal level in history books.
Speaker 2 00:24:30 Um, I was very fortunate in that. I have my brother who has a wonderful memory and I have 14 first cousins, uh, on this maternal side. And I interviewed all, but one of them, multiple times I recorded the interviews. I transcribed them. Um, they all went through their closets and addicts and came up with amazing letters, memoirs that had been written photographs, which of course contain so much information. And between the interviews and the documents, the sort of material items that their own collections of my grandfather's art or collections of other items that they had managed to keep in the family engagement rings, and, you know, visiting cards, things like that. Um, and the archival work and the sort of reading, careful reading of history, uh, reading of, uh, contemporaneous memoirs to sort of fill in some of the details. Um, yeah, it was my goal to present them as, as, as fully human beings who had their strengths and have their flaws. And I think that's the way, um, my mother passed things down in the family, but it wasn't just this sort of golden idealized story, but the story of our family, like the story of so many families, it's just the story of human beings who have wonderful attributes and who have very natural human weaknesses.
Speaker 1 00:25:59 I really, I really enjoyed your answer. RP. I thought she was, she was a really interesting person to follow around. And I like the fact that, um, this is an introduction that, that, that she left things to you. It's almost like she knew that you would do this project.
Speaker 2 00:26:17 Yeah. I mean, I had no idea. I wish I had asked her more questions. She was really like a second mother to me. She, you know, the, most of the time I knew her, she lived in Washington DC and I would frequently go and spend a few days with her. And then I would often do my own music research in the library of Congress. So I would stay with her and we would talk and talk and talk. And, um, she was the historian of her generation and she would give me assignments, um, find this book or, you know, locate this piece of information. And I think neither of us consciously thought we were going to do this because there wasn't the internet. And there wasn't like access to, um, information as there is today or, or the ability to communicate with people in so many different parts of the world instantaneously.
Speaker 2 00:27:05 But I think had she been able to foresee that she either would have done it herself or would have assigned it to me? So it was a it's. I view it as part of my legacy from her, you know, she preserved, uh, to the best of her ability, um, knowledge of her father's work. She interviewed him in the last year of his life in Beirut, and she wrote down the results of those interviews. And she managed to keep this, um, collection of documents, incredibly valuable documents that, that had not been examined by art historians. I mean, and they ended up coming to me. So, um, yeah, I mean, I sort of view that as my legacy and, and my cousins kind of, I think they, they thought that because I had gone on to a life in the arts, you know, it would be a good thing to support me in my efforts. And they have all been extraordinarily generous with their time and, you know, sharing the things that they inherited.
Speaker 1 00:28:08 So let's, I want to touch on a thread you just picked up, which is sort of the art history element of it, because I'll have to say, and this is we'll bring in my own personal story. Um, one of the things that made me so interested in your book is, is my own history. And the fact that I grew up going to, um, the Bali on studio ceramics
Speaker 2 00:28:31 Novelis road, not
Speaker 1 00:28:33 This road in, in Jerusalem, um, partly because it's so close to the U S embassy. So we would get up early. Um, my parents would take us off of school to go to the U S embassy to renew our passports or some things we'd go through checkpoints. Um, and then afterwards, our reward was that, well, we'd go get food, obviously, but before we do that, we would go to the volumes and we would go look at things. Um, uh, we would go, they have a window open of course, in their studio, so you can watch them working. And, and it was such a big part of my mom collects art of all different sorts, um, what people call folk art, but art, because it's part of how our cultures produce art. And, um, my mom has a rather large collection of Armenian ceramics. And I always, I, I, when I was that young, I just sort of, we had Armenian friends, we knew Armenian, we saw churches frequently on our goings and comings around Palestine.
Speaker 1 00:29:32 Um, the Armenian mass in Jerusalem was, it was something you went to for Christmas. It was, there were all these different aspects to it. And I very much internalized that Armenians were part of our Palestinian landscape, like Assyrians, like, like we were all, I mean, it comes from my mom being Christian too. There was this assumption that, I mean, we just assumed that everyone was Palestinian and there are sectarian quote unquote sectarian issues, but it was a big part of my childhood. And I never really, I, of course I knew about the genocide and I knew about all these different things, but I didn't know exactly how sir, how Armenian ceramics got to Jerusalem and the relationship between Armenian ceramics and what are known as Hebron ceramics now, and reading this book, I'll have to say, I wasn't, like I knew when historical events were going to happen.
Speaker 1 00:30:19 So it wasn't like I was holding my breath because I kind of knew what was going to happen to the people, even though I wanted the characters and then I wanted to know how they reacted. But another thing that I wanted to know was what happened, like, how did this, how did the ceramics get to Jerusalem? What, what were the, what were the considerations with foil and clay and color and how did, and, and, and, and all these different reading the book was like seeing my friends, seeing all these pieces that I'd seen before and realizing that your grandfather had a direct hand in this, and it was, it was phenomenal. So I want to ask you by way of that sort of monologue, um, about the art history in this DV academic discipline. Cause I can imagine you've spoken to me about this before that you're making a major contribution here in art history. You're correcting several assumptions.
Speaker 2 00:31:12 Well, I think that's very generous of you. I mean, you're an amazing person to have read the book because you, you bring so much to it already, but just to give, um, anybody who's listening to this, a nutshell, you know, as, as most listeners will probably know, you know, the most, uh, the best known, uh, the best known of Anatolian Ottoman Anatolian ceramics came from the city, the town of his Nick by lake his Nick, where there were very rich supplies of all the, uh, the kale and the kind of white China clay, and the other minerals that, uh, became characteristic in the 15th and 16th centuries of Islamic ceramics, ceramics were supported, uh, by the Imperial court through many commissions for tableware. And then for, uh, tiles, we know all these, the great mosques in Turkey that are covered with Islamic ceramics. Um, the very heavily influenced by Chinese ceramics that came through, you know, even older.
Speaker 2 00:32:18 Uh, and then in the 17th century, that trade went into a steep decline and Katakia was a secondary ceramic center, which had been functioning all this time, but really kind of rose to the fore in the beginning of the 18th century with the near demise of the Islamic trade. And Kutahya was also on a historic trade routes. So there were lots of different sort of visual materials coming through that were incorporated into the, uh, repertoire, the visual repertoire of Kutahya ceramics. And of course there were also many Armenians and Greeks, as well as Turks who were working historically in Katakia. So there were different lines of ceramics that were produced. There were some that kind of followed along the, the, the pap styles and patterns of the Imperial, uh, ceramics that were produced in his Nick. But then there were these very different, uh, figurative and, um, ecclesiastical functional objects that, you know, a very wide right lemon squeezers coffee cups were a hugely, uh, prolific product of, of Kutahya at any rate, um, in the 19th century, along with a sort of economic stagnation in the Ottoman empire, uh, and with, uh, the diminishment of, uh, Imperial commissions to Katakia the trade really stagnated.
Speaker 2 00:33:52 And, um, but it didn't stop, but in history books, the 19th century Katakia output became kind of, uh, a black hole and, uh, people sort of just would refer to it passingly. And, but there, there were actually things going on and there were records that again, you know, hadn't really been examined. There was a revival in the third quarter of the 19th century, and then ironically under the young Turk, uh, modernizing, uh, projects that the efforts of the young Turks, uh, there was a revival again after 1908, uh, or I should say there was an acceleration of the revival that was already in place in 19 0 8, 19 9, and between this period of 1908 and the beginning, well, even into the period of the great war, there was just a huge amount of activity in Katakia, which kind of has, uh, you know, happened outside the range of most of the people who had been writing about these artistic traditions.
Speaker 2 00:34:58 But of course, I had certain records from my answer RP from my grandfather about commissions that he fulfilled in that period. And then, you know, once I started looking, I found a lot more and it's, it's interesting too, because the products of the Katakia workshops in that period, we can actually see them all over Istanbul now. Um, but people don't really know like when they were made or what the origin was, who, who the people were, who were making them. So the story of my grandfather, I mean, his career, um, actually illustrated this trajectory. So was he owned one of the three workshops that were active in Kutahya in the period, right before the first world war. Um, he was deported, he was arrested and deported the end of 1915 deported early 1916 to Aleppo, and then ended up coming to Jerusalem at the end of 1918, just so that the story doesn't go on for too much longer, um, you know, he, this art moved in, in his person.
Speaker 2 00:36:05 He had attained expertise, not only in the production of ceramics during his time in Katakia, but because he also participated in the very, very active projects that were sponsored by the young Turk regime to, uh, scientifically restore historic tiled monuments from the 13th century, from the Seljuk era into, uh, the Ottoman era, he had contact with all of these ceramics. So he liked the people he was working with, examined them closely, uh, figured out what materials were used, how tiles were attached to monuments, like all sorts of, uh, technical knowledge. And so when the time came for the British to contemplate making new tiles, producing new tiles for the dome of the rock, which was in a precarious condition by the time the British occupied Jerusalem, um, he was a person who came to mind. And I mean, we might talk more about the specifics of that, but, um, he contained this kind of technical and historical knowledge, which he transmitted specifically to Jerusalem.
Speaker 1 00:37:17 Oh, I finally found it. I was, I, as you were speaking, I was looking for the green dome of the nut Denny cornea. Um, because I know that it, it Konya was one of the places you went to any research the book, and yes, it's an iconic piece. And then it's one of these moments that I had where I felt like I was, I don't, I don't know how to say it, like in the presence of your grandfather having seen these spaces and having spent time in Jerusalem and con like, it just, it felt there were these moments of, I don't know, anyway, and then there's a moment in the book where you're in cornea, that I was, it's just it's so it's, it's magical. I don't even know what this stuff, in words it's, it's, it's so tear-jerking and enchanted, um, I'm going to stop. It also shows
Speaker 2 00:38:07 Us how material culture tells us, like much larger historical stories. So by, you know, by tracing my grandfather's output, you know, we also, we also see what happens, like, for example, for the Armenian people and how this other wave of Armenians ended up coming to Palestine. I mean, Armenians had been there historically for a very, very long time, but many, many more arrived, uh, during and after the great war.
Speaker 1 00:38:34 Yeah. Um, yeah, I think that's another element of this is that I get very emotional when I think about your book. And when I engage with, with, with your grandfather's story, just because, I mean, there's so many, especially your mother to your mother's story, and I won't spoil anything for the book because of course you want people to go out and get a copy of themselves or borrow it from a public institution. Um, you know, the Armenian and the Palestinian stories are in many ways, one in many ways, parallels because there are so many different Armenian and Palestinian narratives. And I think seeing how material, I think material history is one way of telling these stories. And I think the book is such a great, it's a micro history, it's a material history, it's a cultural history and it's a family history. It's all these different things wrapped into one and done really brilliantly.
Speaker 1 00:39:29 And I think, um, it, it, it is, it is another way to tell us the story of what happened, um, with, I mean, this is where I want to talk to you about terms your family referred to it as the massacres. We refer to it now as genocide, the Armenian genocide, um, it, how do you, how, how it's such a sensitive question. And I also don't like freeze, it's one of these things you really can't put into words. How, how do you write about these things and how do you contend with the fact that your book is really another story of, of that event?
Speaker 2 00:40:11 Yeah, it's definitely a story of Armenian genocide and had it not been for the Armenian genocide. I mean, had there not been, you know, organized mass violence and forced migration of Armenians from the Ottoman empire, like, you know, we wouldn't have, we wouldn't have the Armenian ceramics of Jerusalem as we have them today. So, uh, no, I mean, I of course have absolutely no hesitation about using the word that the word in my family and, you know, my mother died in 1995. Um, my mother, because she suffered this sort of lingering effects of two generations of forced displacement clung to all the things that rooted her in the places where she had lived in the places that she loved, you know, the people that she loved. And since, as we know the word genocide was not coined until 1944, when the Polish Jewish jurist, uh, Lampkin, you know, came up with this word to kind of encapsulate, uh, the state sponsored, uh, state sponsored atrocities and, um, directed episodes of, of mass violence, uh, of cultural destruction of forced displacement, all harbors that we can think of.
Speaker 2 00:41:35 Uh, but since that word hadn't really been, certainly hadn't been coined, um, in, in, during most of my grandfather's life, she clung to the words that he used, and this is true in a lot of Armenian families that, you know, they, they called it the massacre. So a lot of people called it the massacres, they called it the Holocaust. Um, they call it the great catastrophe. There, there were a lot of words that were used, and it was as though people were reaching out and trying to find some way to wrap their minds around this concept, for which one singular word had not yet been invented the word genocide. So, um, of course it's the word that I use, but because the nine biographical chapters are not only historical, but there are work of memory. I chose to keep as much of the language that my mother had passed down to me as I could. And, and as you see, there are like archaic place names, spellings, and things like that. I spelled things the way they spelled them. And I use terms and language that, that they used. And I actually tried to make a point of not introducing any words that were coined after the periods that I was writing about to try to maintain a kind of internal consistency with that style of storytelling.
Speaker 1 00:42:56 Yeah. That's was something that's about to know what the fact that you go from. If you notice between the personal chapters and the historical chapters in the middle, um, the spelling's changed and that's quite a bit of it. It wakes you up to the fact that you're in a different world. And I liked that as an orienting technique. Um,
Speaker 2 00:43:14 I also, I also address it in the author's note on the very first page of the book.
Speaker 1 00:43:19 It's, it's very careful. I like the book. I mean, I mean, you will fight about this all day, but I think of you as a historian. Well, if you're really kind, and I think you have the professional training, that's what it is to go into an archive and then be confronted by so many things and, and, and come up with a narrative, stringing it together because that's what the act of this is. And, and this one has a very human heart, and I did want to get back to one thing you said, which was this, um, you referenced the fact that your mother went through too well, is it too? Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:44:00 Two generations worth of, you know, very disorienting, uh, you know, forced displacement. Well,
Speaker 1 00:44:07 Yeah. And then she had to leave Egypt, right? Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, it's, I mean, I, I feel similarly about terms because I never know my, my, my, my father uses the word ethnic cleansing, or my grandfather never, it never did with regards to Palestine. And I think, I think maybe one thing, my grandfather was probably a little bit more sensitive to, as the fact that to destroy any reference to it, of course, to destroy a culture, to go short people is also to destroy the culture. And that's what genocide is. It attempts to destroy these other cultural elements. And it's very marked and careful in how it attempts to destroy documentation of what culture remained. And I think that's really a triumph. I think of your grandfather's story is that he brought this art and he was able to preserve it. And because of him there, I mean, I wish his studios. I mean, I wish the studio still existed. Um, mostly because if his studio still existed, certain things wouldn't have happened ever. Maybe I don't know. Um, but because of him, there are ceramics in Jerusalem and it's become part of, of the city.
Speaker 2 00:45:22 Yes, yes. And, um, I mean, it was, it was a confluence of, of many different circumstances. I mean, the British already knew who he was because he had done a major commission for Mark Sykes who was extremely well-connected. Uh, you know, as, as you know, there's, uh, in the Sykes estate in Yorkshire called sled Muir house, there's a very famous room. That's been written about a lot. That's dubbed the Turkish room. Um, that was entirely made by my grandfather. Although my grandfather never saw it. I mean, he, this was designed remotely and in cooperation with Sykes, his architect, uh, the architect and Sykes, uh, I mean, obviously Sikes met my grandfather several times in Katakia, but, um, they sent elevations back and forth and letters back and forth, and that documentation actually remains. But because of this really magnificent room that people can visit today at slim your house, um, many of the people in psychosis circle, including Ronald stores who would go on to be the military governor of Jerusalem, um, saw my grandfather's work.
Speaker 2 00:46:36 And so they understood that this, this, this art was still alive somewhere in the world. So when they ended up in Jerusalem and they were contemplating restoration of the holy sites, a number of people remembered my grandfather. Of course, they didn't know if he had survived the, um, what we call the genocide now. Uh, but of course he had an a through, you know, yet another incredibly fortuitous twist Sykes who went to Aleppo at the end of 1918 to establish a provisional British administration, re met my grandfather and arranged for him to go to Jerusalem, to consult on this planned British restoration of the dome of the rock. So that's how this art ended up coming to Jerusalem. It was so many kind of strokes of luck and, uh, serendipitous circumstances. And then of course, you know, the fact that my grandfather had this wide ranging technical knowledge of Kutahya ceramics and how to, how to run a workshop and the division of labor, and you know, how to source materials, all of this, my grandfather maintained the traditional techniques, including the use of a wood-fire kill him until the end of his career in 1948.
Speaker 2 00:47:58 And he may have been one of the very last people, if not the last one to have come from this Anatolian tradition who continued using the wood-fired killed until the end of his professional life. And he also grounded the glazes, you know, using the minerals by hand, he, he did something in his ceramic making in Jerusalem, which I don't see as much now, which was he combined the use of opaque and translucent glazes, which is something that gives like tremendous vitality to, as Nick ceramics from, you know, the peak period of their production. So, I mean, he was very kind of historically aware and although, I mean, obviously he didn't reach the standard that the Islamic ceramicists had in, you know, 15th and 16th centuries. He had that as a model, as an aspiration in his mind's eye,
Speaker 1 00:48:54 It's listening to you speak, I'm also struck by the fact that you're really the final Lincoln's training. Maybe not the final final one, but you're a link. You're the latest link in the chain
Speaker 2 00:49:04 I am. But, you know, there are a lot of, uh, Armenian ceramicists as you know, in Jerusalem, um, you know, who are continuing to produce and invol evolve the art, you know, of course the volumes and the car cautions, but, um, you know, there are other Armenian families there as well as, you know, <inaudible> the lapel Jones
Speaker 1 00:49:27 By documents. And I suppose I think there's something really because of you, there's this that's, it's another form of us. I don't know. It's the most, when I think about history, I think about the fact that if certain, if something happens knowing it happens, Hmm, I get romantic about documentation sometimes. And sometimes I'm also of the opinion that if something is lost, you know, if a building is lost or if a document is lost, then that that's its fate. And I get very fatalistic, then I go back and forth different spectrums of romanticism. Oh, that's how my brain works, but I don't know. There's something very, it's another sort of, not coincidence, but it's another sort of link in that all these sort of chess pieces were set out and you were one of them moving forward and sort of progressing the game by documenting all of this down and being, I don't know, you also, your knowledge of ceramics, so dense in itself, this isn't just a family history. This is clearly something that was written by someone who understands ceramics. And I think an element of that if I can be so bold comes from the fact that, um, you're an artist yourself and you understand sort of the importance of inherently of, um, of holding on to certain types of things. I don't know.
Speaker 2 00:50:51 Well, I mean, that's true, but I definitely do not want to give myself too much credit, you know, on the, that's fine. I'll give it to me. I mean, my grandfather, I mean, the fact that he survived and that he ended up in Jerusalem through all these, you know, confluences of fate, you know, you could say that so that his art, the art that he replanted there became a new branch in kind of post autumn ceramics. There was that. And then there was the other sort of confluence of circumstances of, of me like trying to come to terms with several generations of trauma in my family, you know, finding a more peaceful way to live and also being able to collect a really substantial amount of documentation relating to my grandfather's work and also wanting to contextualize it after having spent kind of a professional lifetime, trying to contextualize works of art.
Speaker 2 00:51:46 So, I mean, I was already in that mindset and then having the amazing gift of coming across, you know, large amounts of documentation from my grandfather's hands, you know, photographs that he had taken glaze formulas that he had preserved, uh, chem, you know, chemical formulas, uh, design ideas, lots of pieces of paper that had his sketches. So I, you know, sort of gained a little window into how he thought and how he conceptualized because of course he died before I was born. And then, you know, plans for the, um, workshop that he hoped to rebuild in Jerusalem, like after nine four in 1948. I mean, in, I guess the early 1950s when he was in Egypt, he, uh, he worked with an Egyptian architect, Hassan, uh, Fati bay, as he called him who designed a new workshop that, you know, my grandfather hoped would employ, you know, up to 400 artisans. I mean, it was just, it's like this incredible amount of, uh, of stuff that came together through the efforts of my cousins and also, you know, through the efforts of a lot of librarians around the world to actually help me find documentation. So, you know, this was the, this was the consolidated effort of many, many different people.
Speaker 1 00:53:10 Yeah. And you think every one, so generously and acknowledgements, which not everyone does,
Speaker 2 00:53:15 You can't work without librarians. I mean, you know, it's like very, very hard when you're doing, especially like this kind of archival work, that that is the result of piecing together tiny scraps of information from, from such disparate sources. I mean, Ottoman trade journals. And, you know, for, for some period of time, like I was trying to figure out my, my grandfather spent a few years after his father died when he was 14 years old. And before he went to Katakia, when he was 17 years old, he went to work for an egg merchant in ESCO shear. And, um, I wanted to know more about eggs at that period in autumn and history. And I was like going to Avery library at Columbia every day, the art and architecture library and the librarians were very, very patient with me. But at the beginning of trying to figure out about eggs and, you know, the egg trade at that time, um, the main reference librarian there, I had gone in and had a little conference with her about it.
Speaker 2 00:54:17 Uh, I didn't go to the library for a week cause I was on tour or something. And when I came back, she came like, you know, not quite shouting out of her office when she saw me, but she came running over and said, I've been looking for you. I've been looking for you, look at this trade journal. I learned so much about eggs and last week and, you know, kitty chimney, this is, I mean, you know, I owe her a great debt of thing, say, oh, you know, guide Brock and Peter McGear ski the two middle east area specialist librarians at NYU and Columbia who were just went so far out of their way to help me, uh, collect the materials that I needed. So yeah, I think them in my mind every single day.
Speaker 1 00:55:02 So, um, I want to switch gears for a second because I think this connects to the book indirectly, which is your musical career, which is where we started this conversation. Um, that was my first introduction to your work was, um, the, um, you have, uh, an album of Armenian lullabies that you've adapted and that are set to the flute and the harp. Yes. Um, and I, I adore it. It's so wonderful. And it was really cool to read the book and see someone who wrote some of those little buys turn up and it's, it's this full circle of, of, of, of you being, um, if people can hear movement in the backgrounds, cause I'm holding the book and I'm thinking through it, cause it's just so it's stunning and I love it. And we can talk about that in a little bit, or I'll say that in introduction or something there it's, it's a physically beautiful book. And I highly encourage people to look at the physical book because it's so beautifully put together by Redwood press, which is an imprint of Stanford university. Um, so yeah, regarding the music, um, I see that album in particular bias as this act of documentation as well, it's this, it's this act of preservation, but interpretation and, and it comes full circle with the book too, because of course, if there are many lullabies and there's this, there's, there's all these different layers of history to it.
Speaker 2 00:56:25 Yes. Well, as you alluded, um, there's a, a central figure in Armenian culture. Um, gamete us VAR Tibet, gummy DAS was the name he adopted when he became a priest and Varta bed is, uh, uh, an honorific for a celibate, a learned celibate priest. So gomidas VAR, Tibet was born as soemone Soho ammonia in Chautauqua in 1869. And of course spent, uh, spent his life actually transcribing. I mean, he did many, many things, but I think the thing he's most remembered for is that he transcribed many village songs that were passed down through many generations and perhaps even centuries among the Eastern provinces of the Ottoman empire, the Armenian provinces. Um, so he, he collected them, he transcribed them, he studied them, he studied, you know what, we now call ethno musicology in Berlin. And he spent some years kind of trying to study what were the Kurdish influences?
Speaker 2 00:57:33 What were the Persian influences, Turkish influences and try to sort all those things out and preserve the body of Armenian songs. So he did this and then he was among, um, the, at least 250 people who were arrested all at once the evening of April 24th, 1915, and then deported into central Anatolia. Most of them were killed. He survived. Uh, but he never really, uh, he never really had artistic output after that. So he spent the rest of his life, um, in psychiatric institutions, both in Turkey and then eventually in France where he died in 1935. So he preserved this body of, um, orally transmitted, Armenian culture. Most of the people who were the containers of the knowledge of this music were killed during the genocide. So he's taken on an actual role as a musicologist, as a composer, as a theoretician, as a person who introduced Armenian music to European and other audiences during his lifetime.
Speaker 2 00:58:45 And he's also taken on a symbolic role as a person who survived the genocide, but was silenced by it. Although he, he lived afterwards. So meanwhile, my grandfather met him several times, going to dusk, came to Kutahya. My grandfather learned all of his songs. My grandfather taught those songs to his children and my mother taught them to me. So when it came to be 2015, the hundredth commemoration of this catastrophe, I wanted to do something to honor the memory of all those people, the memory of those who had, as we say, fallen asleep. And so I, you know, I recorded this music, um, but I also used my grandfather's art to decorate the, the CD cover and all that. And inside the CV CD, there's an inscription that comes from an Armenian funerary chapel, just outside the old city of Jerusalem that was, um, uncovered in an archeological excavation.
Speaker 2 00:59:55 And I believe it was 1894, but dates back to the fifth or sixth centuries. And on the floor of this chapel, there's some mosaic with that illustrates the 40 birds we call it. So it's, it's a tree that has branches with beautiful birds. And in the center of this tree, there's a caged bird with the idea that the bird, even though it is caged, the song of the bird goes, goes up to God. And the funerary chapel from all those centuries ago has an inscription that honors the souls of those Armenians. Only the Lord knows where they are. And my grandfather used the motif of the birds throughout his life in Jerusalem. I mean, there are many, many pieces and tile installations incorporating these, this Armenian bird motif as it's known. But since the origin of that motif was from a funeral chapel that remembered the souls of lost Armenians. It made sense to me to use that as a unifying element.
Speaker 1 01:01:03 So you also enter these dialogues of what it is to be because I really, and I've had this conversation with you before. I think of you as a cultural heritage professional, that's sort of how I take everything that you do in my mind. And I, that's how I take everything that you do in my mind. And I bring it together. Um, because I think of you as this person who understands these, these, these principles of, of, and this ethics of how to communicate the past and how to create something new as well. Um, so that's my, my bow, not my box for you. I, the reason I like that title is because I don't like thinking of you in a box. I think of, of Sato as this, this, this, this artistic and creative and ethical entity. Um, my God I'm sounding so new age, but anyway, um, tell me about your you're the leader of a musical ensemble. Um, perspectives. Is it, is it based out of Columbia?
Speaker 2 01:02:06 Is that what it is, was founded at Columbia in 1993 perspectives ensemble.
Speaker 1 01:02:11 So tell me more about that in your role in it. And also I know you're up to, I mean, since we talked, we talked about Gomez. Um, you have projects going on in sort of musical heritage. So tell me more about
Speaker 2 01:02:24 All that stuff. So, I mean, perspectives, ensemble, you know, something, I found a project, I found it in 1993 with the idea that, you know, this, this group would present events that would, uh, feature the word works of composers and also visual artists in a sort of historical and cultural context. And it's, it's changed, you know, it's evolved over the years. Like in the beginning we had pre concert talks and, you know, we've always had like written materials. Now. Now what I've been trying to do is to embed all of that in, in our performances and our recordings. Um, we have quite a few recordings. Uh, we have two that came out on the Naxos label that I'm very proud of, um, that I led. So because of COVID, we had to cancel a bunch of, of concerts. And, um, one of the foundations that supports us, uh, very kindly gave us a COVID emergency grant.
Speaker 2 01:03:24 So we're doing several different things with it. And one of the things we're doing is producing a video that we'll drop, uh, on YouTube later in August of Sylvia, Alla, Jaji talking actually about gummy dusts and talking about like the kind of construction of identity, um, in Armenian diaspora and what gummi does his role. Wasn't some of the things that we talked about a few minutes ago, what gummy does actually did, and also the role that he has come to play and how sites have a remembrance for Gumby to sculptures of him have also become sites of memory and mourning for Armenians, like cultural figure that's come to stand for so many different things. So I kind of wanted to do the opposite thing with my grandfather. I wanted to, um, restore the idea of his agency because I found that like, that's, what's so often just wiped out of history as we were talking about earlier that, you know, everybody's either the victim or they're the, you know, uh, they're patronize, um, patronized by, you know, the British mandate or whatever.
Speaker 2 01:04:33 And in all the writing about my grandfather, um, both when it comes to how to talk, his ceramics are, are recorded by, uh, Turkish or British art historians. And also how Jerusalem ceramics are recorded by Israeli and British art historians. It's always, you know, well, the British wanted to do this and Ashby wanted to do this and Ronald's stores was wanting to do this, but none of those things could have happened without the person of my grandfather without his historical knowledge and without his initiatives. I mean, and also without the involvement of the Mufti in Jerusalem, which is something that's like left out of the narrative almost entirely. So, I mean, I wanted to, I wanted to, um, restore a sense of agency to him, his actions and I, and I find like, um, you know, that is, it's just such a vacuum, an absence, a gap in a lot of historical storytelling. I mean, we come up with these short hands for how things happen. You know, we say Lincoln freed the slaves, enslaved people of the United States, which completely wipes out the huge and potentially even more important contributions of individual African-Americans in their own liberation. You know? So I feel like if I could do this in the character of one person, my grandfather, I feel like I will have made it contribution.
Speaker 0 01:06:09 Thank you for listening. And again, a big thank you to SATA Mongolian. You can follow her at Sato, Mongolian on Twitter. You can follow me at <inaudible> 26 and you can follow the me Dan at mini Dan on Twitter. The production team includes Micah Hughes and Amita Kelly. Although you can follow Micah at Micah, a Hughes, our music is by blue dot sessions and be sure to subscribe or follow them down on social media for upcoming episodes and more on the may downs, broad selection of podcasts.
